My Shadow Wishlist

So this is somewhat inspired by the feedback thing Blizzard started, but this is what I'd like to see happen to the Shadow Priest:

-Remove our reliance on DI: I don't like losing dps because I don't have a Warlock buddy to dungeon/raid with me. It's not fun. My suggestion for this is to make Mind Flay work like Arcane Missiles, (ie not a dot) and buff its damage to compensate. This would kind of hurt our mastery, but I have an idea for that later...-Haste buffs should not go towards dot thresholds: Haste thresholds should be only attainable with gear, in my opinion.-Archangel should be a Shadow Mechanic, not a Discipline one: While the beginning of the Shadow Tree is kind of cluttered, I feel as if these talents are far more important to shadow than discipline. This would be a convenience thing, really, but it helps with my idea for Shadow mastery...-Make Shadow's Mastery 'Angelic Nightmare' or (something similiar) Increases the benefit of Evangelism (by our current mastery's rate) My reasoning behind this, is that I would MUCH rather have our mastery benefit our more reliable mechanic. This would be kind of a nerf to our mastery, but if there could be a way for the mastery to benefit Archangel, without making the cd overpowered, I'd love to hear your ideas (:
(unrelated to the mastery thing, but once you get 5 stacks of Evangelism, a Shadow Orb should have a 100% chance to proc)-When you consume a Shadow Orb, you gain 5% of your total mana: This really is a quality of life issue, but I hate having to use cooldowns to not oom. If our mana became retardedly unlimited, I would welcome a nerf to Archangel's mana return.

I would love to hear what you guys think of my ideas, or any ideas of your own. (:

1) That won't change. DI scales with us too well, even with the 6% nerf. It just pumps out too much damage from our flays and dots. The higher we go with dps, the more we'd look for a DI. % buff, nothing to add. I do raid in a very small guild that started, as a guild (LOL) only from the last week of august, sometimes i've a lock in our setup, giving me DI +10%SP and a CoE. I ignore the math behind this, but i jumped from 23K dps on Baleroc to 27K sustained. Hell of a increase. On alysrazor is even more dramatic, from 51K at the end of the fight to 62K. Seriously, 11K difference. And i'm like 373 ilevel.

2)That's a severe nerf in the end. Bloodlust, Alysrazor and DI. HELL...NO.

3)It's as "core" as in Atonement disc priests, beside that, you can't really swap any talents from a tree to another without major overhaul in shadow tree. And with the current Disc and Holy trees, we would just spend random points for random talents. And yeah, disc priest with easy to get improved fear for an overall 23sec fear and a silence. Scary increase of PVP disc effectiveness.

4) Rework our mastery to work with a talent that needs to be picked up thru talent points. Bad idea.

5) cool idea, sometimes i just wish i could spam some more dots without going oom. For example, bethillac 2 healed with like 1 haler + 6 dps below the huge spider during p1. Always ending with 0 or maybe 1 spinner left on the roof, then nothing. lot of MSear spam without the constant mana - rec from aoe damage.
Yeah i approve this.

tbh what i would like to see most as a quality of life change is SWD backlash damage it is fine on normal mode fights but once you get to heroics last 25% on boss are usually so damage intensive using SWD might end very bad for us... and after all this is our execute mechanic... that we can't use during execute phase

as for OP:

relaying less on DI would be awesome, i for example have no warlock in our 10 man team and feel gimped by lack of it... someone on official forums suggested to even buff darkness to 2/4/6% haste and ban spriest on DI buff list to make it fair, which might work but someone with mathematical brain would have to run simcraft and check if it is valid option

as for dots, shadow priest is DoT class same as affi locks you will have to get used to mechanics combined with heavy DoTs use and when/how to reapply them for maximum benefit

wings in disc tree are fine shadow always used disc tree for last talent points, also disc priests need this mechanic too if not for main spec then as 2nd disc build moving it to shadow tree would force em to pass on holy tree talents and go deeper in to shadow tree i guess that could be fixed some how with talent trees but imo there is too much moving around in all our talent trees to make it worth it.

i was hoping our mastery will be something much more interesting then buff to mechanic we can't control at all :/ if blizzard would somehow fix RNG on orb then mastery is fine as it is - many priests suggest 2-3 min cd buff/ability that generates 1 orb so on pull we have access to orb and combined with it buffs.

mana as shadow is not an issue... or stops to be an issue with better gear at very fast rate, once you get few upgrades going oom is very very hard as mentioned above only way to go oom as shadow is to make something stupid with your spells.

1) That won't change. DI scales with us too well, even with the 6% nerf. It just pumps out too much damage from our flays and dots. The higher we go with dps, the more we'd look for a DI. % buff, nothing to add. I do raid in a very small guild that started, as a guild (LOL) only from the last week of august, sometimes i've a lock in our setup, giving me DI +10%SP and a CoE. I ignore the math behind this, but i jumped from 23K dps on Baleroc to 27K sustained. Hell of a increase. On alysrazor is even more dramatic, from 51K at the end of the fight to 62K. Seriously, 11K difference. And i'm like 373 ilevel.

2)That's a severe nerf in the end. Bloodlust, Alysrazor and DI. HELL...NO.

3)It's as "core" as in Atonement disc priests, beside that, you can't really swap any talents from a tree to another without major overhaul in shadow tree. And with the current Disc and Holy trees, we would just spend random points for random talents. And yeah, disc priest with easy to get improved fear for an overall 23sec fear and a silence. Scary increase of PVP disc effectiveness.

4) Rework our mastery to work with a talent that needs to be picked up thru talent points. Bad idea.

5) cool idea, sometimes i just wish i could spam some more dots without going oom. For example, bethillac 2 healed with like 1 haler + 6 dps below the huge spider during p1. Always ending with 0 or maybe 1 spinner left on the roof, then nothing. lot of MSear spam without the constant mana - rec from aoe damage.
Yeah i approve this.

Very much this plus having 100% orb proc chance would be extremely OP in pvp imo, stack up evangelism, stack up orbs, pop cds, rape everything while getting more orbs. I don't think we _really_ need more mana regeneration, however on aoe fights mana management actually has it's place, so I personally wouldn't mind getting some mana from orbs, or getting Mind Sear's spell cost reduced by a tiny little bit.

Reliance on DI: I hate this part too, DI in essence is very fucked up buff as when all other "single type" buffs were removed DI got added and Focus Magic stayed, either remove DI and buff SP by some margin or make DI raidwide.
Shadow Mastery: Truth to be told I love current shadow mastery, I don't see reason to change it scaling with Archangel would probably just lead to some fucked up full mastery specs involving only mind spike.
Shadow Orbs and Mana: I never ever have mana issues on any of fights unless it's Ragnaros Heroic and even then it happens extremely rarely, as long as you utilize your tools good, you shouldn't struggle with mana.

My problems which in my opinion are much more acute is SW backlash, now that content is on farm and we are killing everything before AoE burn us down it's not exactly issue but during start of firelands getting 70k backlashes from double crits did make life complicated, add to backlash scaling with damage buffs and debuffs increasing damage taken make this very annoying mechanic.

Other problem is Shadow Orb and their a tad RNG way of proccing, adding a simple cooldown to Shadow Tree which would grant let's say 3 orbs and 5 stacks of evangelism on 2 minute cooldown would be great hell 1 orb on 5min cooldown would be enough just for those fights where you just ain't getting shadow orb with trinkets and power torrent procced.

1) I still do not understand this noise about spriests "relying" on DI. That's like saying we "rely" on having FM, totem of Wrath, or any other buff we get in a raid; they are optional bonuses that help us out. Do we scale well with buffs? Hell yes. That does not mean we're shitty dps without them or that we can't top charts anyway. I've got an asshole lock in guild that always gives DI to the resto druid and has a good 5 ilvl points ahead of me on gear and I am less than 1k DPS behind him, if not ahead of him, regardless of the fight. It would be nice to have the spare stats for some extra mastery, but it's not wrecking my ability to do my job in a raid. I do not rely on DI.

But whatever. How do we "fix" this supposed reliance on DI?
-Raid wide haste buff! Oh wait, that's what Darkness is, but lamer, because it's only 3% instead of Spriests'/Boomkins'/Shamans' 5%.
-Raid wide damage buff! Oh wait, that's the spellpower buff from Mages and Shamans, but theirs is better because it's spellpower, and even healers benefit.
-Get rid of it! You asshole, what the hell is the point of taking away a shiny bonus just because you don't get it and others do?

2) I see no reasoning whatsoever for doing this. This would be a catastrophic nerf to shadow and any other DoT/HoT oriented classes. This was an awesome thing that Blizz changed coming out of Wrath, and I can't think of any reason to go back other than bitterness at not being able to comprehend or meet haste plateaus.

3) There's no point in moving it because shadow's always had spare talent points lying around. Filling up our tree with all the points we have gives us useless PVP abilities that don't work in PVE environments. Giving E/AA/At to Disc was to revitalize a very static spec, on par with giving Chakra to Holy priests. The fact that they allowed for E/AA to be used for Shadow was amazing and a well thought out move since Shadow has the extra points to get it for end-game damage dealing, but it's not necessary to do decent damage below max level.

4) We should not have to get a mastery benefit through talents. The way it currently is, we can increase our proc chance through talents, but we always have a passive proc chance. This sounds more like QQ about RNG for orb procs, and I've mentioned my opinion on this several times: I would *gladly* have this RNG proc chance for the rest of WoW's existance than a 100% surefire way to get an orb and the nerfs that will come with it. That's like Mages complaining that Arcane Missles procs are RNG, like locks complaining Ebon Imp procs are RNG, and so on. While ours is the only one that is tied to mastery, it doesn't change a damn thing for our benefit.

Look at mastery's value compared to other stats when you're BiS and have met the 30% haste plateau. Mastery is about equal to haste.... unless you stack haste, and it's gonna fly up in value again as you get closer to the next plateaus, even if they aren't realistically obtainable. Crit is now better than we expected, especially if you get the Rag trinket, making it close to or exchangeable with Mastery. What does a 100% proc chance on an orb do for this? It does nothing. Haste is still the key stat we manage everything around because we have to meet that plateau for extra DoT damage, and more MF and MB casting time. It does not change that crit gets an increase in value with the Rag trinket. It does not change a damn thing about how we look at our gear or our stats.

But, okay, let's think about MB damage with 4 piece and ES uptime. Having an orb on demand would be awesome for that! Until Blizz realizes we are drastically outperforming other classes on single-target raid bosses because we have 100% ES uptime superdots and multi-orb MB's with the 4pc bonus rocking the charts. It doesn't even take any skill, it just takes pushing buttons in the right order with barely even a sense of timing. What the hell is the point of the ES buff if we can make an orb proc on demand? It would be a passive buff! Passive buffs mean Mastery nerf practically the day after, drastically lowering the value of the stat, the 4pc, and shadowpriests overall, because hell if Blizz actually buffs our DoTs again to compensate, or else we'd be the terrors of PVP like we were a few months ago.

There is no way it's happening, and I have no clue why anyone would want this RNG thing to change. It's a pain when you get those rare instances of ES falling off, but there is no way Blizz would give us anything close to a 100% proc chance without kneecapping us right after. It's not even that big of a deal because you're supposed to be refreshing DoTs if ES is about to fall off anyway (if they have only a few ticks left), so you shouldn't be losing the damage on DP and VT, only SW: P. If you're having issues with orb RNG, figure out a way to deal with it; it's not crippling, it's not going to ruin your DPS, and there are ways to compensate so it's not even noticeable. Don't be lazy and QQ about something that actually makes you think on the fly, that's what actually makes Shadow interesting.

5) This, I'm neutral on. The only issues I've ever had with mana were on multi-dot fights (Shannox, but even then I didn't get that close to oom) or fights where I've had to assist with AOE due to raid comp. On the other hand, it's hardly game-breaking because it's not going to give us an edge over any DPS, except maybe overzealous arcane mages.

Originally Posted by Purpleisbetter

Power Torrent, Volcano and Theralion proc'ed, dots just refreshed. Everyone dies. Just a tank and a boss with around 200k hp. Everyone in vt yells "omg we failed omg omg" and you "don't worry amigos, my dots are steamrolling!". Boss dies while you'd say "Enjoy your loots" with a lot of purple awesomness spilling thru your voice. Just happend yesterday.

Seriously, i thought i'd reroll warlock for 4.2, but that was the sign that i'm purple inside and i can't reroll. never.

1) I still do not understand this noise about spriests "relying" on DI. That's like saying we "rely" on having FM, totem of Wrath, or any other buff we get in a raid; they are optional bonuses that help us out. Do we scale well with buffs? Hell yes. That does not mean we're shitty dps without them or that we can't top charts anyway. I've got an asshole lock in guild that always gives DI to the resto druid and has a good 5 ilvl points ahead of me on gear and I am less than 1k DPS behind him, if not ahead of him, regardless of the fight. It would be nice to have the spare stats for some extra mastery, but it's not wrecking my ability to do my job in a raid. I do not rely on DI.

But whatever. How do we "fix" this supposed reliance on DI?
-Raid wide haste buff! Oh wait, that's what Darkness is, but lamer, because it's only 3% instead of Spriests'/Boomkins'/Shamans' 5%.
-Raid wide damage buff! Oh wait, that's the spellpower buff from Mages and Shamans, but theirs is better because it's spellpower, and even healers benefit.
-Get rid of it! You asshole, what the hell is the point of taking away a shiny bonus just because you don't get it and others do?

1. Your other shadow priest sucks, sorry to break it to you.
2. Di is the only buff that would give me about 2,5k dps and thus I don't like it. Going from 29k on Baelroc to 26k isn't funny just because your 10man group can't bring a warlock.

To the OP:
You should rarely, if ever, go oom in PvE as a shadow priest.
Someitmes it might be hard to keep your mana up on Rag while running in p2 spamming DP etcetc, but throwing in a SW: D here and there counter that extreamly good. I do, however, agree with some others that we have huge problems in PvP with our mana, but I think it would be easier to fix that via Machorsism intstead of our orbs.

1. Your other shadow priest sucks, sorry to break it to you.
2. Di is the only buff that would give me about 2,5k dps and thus I don't like it. Going from 29k on Baelroc to 26k isn't funny just because your 10man group can't bring a warlock.

1) I think you mean the lock, and yes, he does.

2) That doesn't keep you from getting the kill or doing your job of pewpew. That's vanity because your DPS isn't overblown.

Originally Posted by Purpleisbetter

Power Torrent, Volcano and Theralion proc'ed, dots just refreshed. Everyone dies. Just a tank and a boss with around 200k hp. Everyone in vt yells "omg we failed omg omg" and you "don't worry amigos, my dots are steamrolling!". Boss dies while you'd say "Enjoy your loots" with a lot of purple awesomness spilling thru your voice. Just happend yesterday.

Seriously, i thought i'd reroll warlock for 4.2, but that was the sign that i'm purple inside and i can't reroll. never.

5) This, I'm neutral on. The only issues I've ever had with mana were on multi-dot fights (Shannox, but even then I didn't get that close to oom) or fights where I've had to assist with AOE due to raid comp. On the other hand, it's hardly game-breaking because it's not going to give us an edge over any DPS, except maybe overzealous arcane mages.

Forgot earlier:
I supose your are doing normals?
Otherwise, why are you multidoting on Shannox? That's just pulling the raid back as it resaults in less dps on Shannox himself that is the only target you want to kill on that fight.

---------- Post added 2011-09-15 at 08:55 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Zuziza

1) I think you mean the lock, and yes, he does.

Oh, didn't realise he was talking about the warlock, well, guess my statement still stands then

Originally Posted by Zuziza

2) That doesn't keep you from getting the kill or doing your job of pewpew. That's vanity because your DPS isn't overblown.

It realy should not affect our chanses to kill a boss like baelroc but the point was rather that the dps loss for me (and therefore also for the raid) is ridicously high for a single buff.

-Get rid of it! You asshole, what the hell is the point of taking away a shiny bonus just because you don't get it and others do?

It's prehistoric in design in a world of normalization something like this shouldn't have a place. This is not about "get rid of coz I don't have it" this is about get rid of it because it's shitty mechanic that should have no place in current enviroment, in world where Blizzard strives to make everything equal you add extremely potent buff to a single class in game which offer a significant DPS boost to certain classes. I have hard time remembering something this broken in recent history I guess Histeria stacking is closest.

Reliance on DI: I hate this part too, DI in essence is very fucked up buff as when all other "single type" buffs were removed DI got added and Focus Magic stayed, either remove DI and buff SP by some margin or make DI raidwide.
Shadow Mastery: Truth to be told I love current shadow mastery, I don't see reason to change it scaling with Archangel would probably just lead to some fucked up full mastery specs involving only mind spike.
Shadow Orbs and Mana: I never ever have mana issues on any of fights unless it's Ragnaros Heroic and even then it happens extremely rarely, as long as you utilize your tools good, you shouldn't struggle with mana.

My problems which in my opinion are much more acute is SW backlash, now that content is on farm and we are killing everything before AoE burn us down it's not exactly issue but during start of firelands getting 70k backlashes from double crits did make life complicated, add to backlash scaling with damage buffs and debuffs increasing damage taken make this very annoying mechanic.

Other problem is Shadow Orb and their a tad RNG way of proccing, adding a simple cooldown to Shadow Tree which would grant let's say 3 orbs and 5 stacks of evangelism on 2 minute cooldown would be great hell 1 orb on 5min cooldown would be enough just for those fights where you just ain't getting shadow orb with trinkets and power torrent procced.

Same issue as an owl. We actually build our BIS around DI, and being able to prove to our RL's that we are the best class for it [thereby fucking over the spriests in the process]. Also makes it harder to kick the damned warlocks. At least its not 9% now. FM? Keep it or leave it; I don't care. It's a pretty uniformish buff that doesn't matter who you toss it on much in most cases as far as I'm aware.

My issues: I don't like DP right now. A spell you have to actively manage/make decisions on should do more damage than SW:P

Tbh I wish they would swap Silence's spot in our talent tree with Psychic Horror and maybe reduce the cooldown so we have a helpful interupt in PvE or make a similar spell or something so we aren't OP in PvP cos god knows we are... o.0 Also tit would be lovely to have a CC that didn't require channeling that we could use on Humanoids. Not sure what it would be. Possibly some sort of confuse or maybe Worship like in the Cho'gall fight, minus us receiving a buff after. xD

I have to agree about the RNG of orbs, would be nice if they made them more reliable or gave us some CD to help with it, like the above posts have said. I also feel that currently even with Sin & Punishment, our DoTs are not very intimidating when dispelled unless we are with an Affli lock. Give back our VT dmg on dispel I say. Or considering its called 'Vampiric' touch why not have it that if its dispelled the spriest is healed for a % of its dmg or something. Also I feel Vampiric Embrace needs some love, maybe towards PvP more than PvE so we aren't deemed 'OP'. Just some ideas of mine anyways. =)

I would really like to see Silence and Psychic Horror swap positions in the tree, and possibly a glyph of Silence which removes the silence part and just makes it an interrupt, and lowers the cooldown by 30 seconds.

I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish. Every inch, but one. An inch. It is small and it is fragile and it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.

I would really like to see Silence and Psychic Horror swap positions in the tree, and possibly a glyph of Silence which removes the silence part and just makes it an interrupt, and lowers the cooldown by 30 seconds.